Everquest Forum » Hogcaller Inn (General) » What would make you come back to EQ?

Originally posted by Heltern

Classic server PLUS fix the most broken class in all MMO's the Everquest Warrior In fact FIX ALL THE CLASSES MORONS!

 

Warrior (Everquest)

I had a level Warrior in Everquest and you know what I remember most? Pressing ‘1′ to initiate auto attack then alternating the pressing ‘2′ to Taunt and ‘3′ to Kick. Exciiiiiiting. Who thought it would be fun to create a class that has access to absolutely zero abilities whilist everyone else runs around shooting lighting bolts or fly kicking mobs in the face. I had a freaking /sit macro - a /sit macro - on my hotkey panel just to use up space. /palmface
 

Druid (Everquest)
You know what absolutely drove me mad? Spending hours getting a full six man group together, holy trinity of classes included, to camp one of the spires surrounding the entrance to Splitpaw in South Karana only to find that a single Druid was already camping the whole damn place. Kiting everything that moves to earn himself a ton of exp and plat. Bastards
 

The warrior thing got fixed about... 5 years ago?  Maybe six.

Classic server or progression server with 2-3 month expansion lockouts are the only things that would make me go back.

The one thing that always brought me back to EQ was the fact that people still grouped a lot in that game. It was a very social game with a decent community. Mercs ruined all of that. So i would only play on a server with no mercs, classic or progression til SoD then I'd probably leave again.

 a really big gfx engine update.

Originally posted by jamesinge

The game is waaay too large and travel is very confusing to an absurd state. The many many many expansions were all just stuck on to the end of existing zones instead of making new landmasses like Kunark and Velious were. Its just way too many zones. Zones after Zones after Zones and ghost towns in all of them where once was a glorious new expansion zone is just nothingness and barren.

 ...

My answer would really be to STOP MAKING EXPANSIONS on top of more and more and more. Its just a massive cluttered mess and a new player could seriously get extremely frustrated attempting to find information about all of the millions of game mechanics that have been changed and introduced and etc etc.

This.  I've gone back several times to EQ over the years, but each time I'm struck by what a mish-mash of zones, travel mechanics, and design philosophies there are in the game.  

I remember when Kunark was released, and the developers were all excited that technology allowed them to make bigger zones.  Soooo, all the Kunark zones are huge, and (generally) empty.    Developers didn't want folks 'camping' parts of dungeons, so all the Kunark dungeons are one-way designs, forcing people to group up and do the dungeon from start to finish in more or less one long run.  This proved extremely unpopular and subsequent expansions had other design philosophies.

In PoP, everything was 'keyed advancement', though it takes a degree in arcane phraseology to determine which keys you need at any one time.  (Oh, and now they've eliminated the whole key thing, too, so parts of PoP make no sense at all). 

Later they decided to graphically upgrade original cities like Freeport, but also decided to completely change the layout of the town in the process, alienating anyone who remembered the original city.

When it became unfashionable to make people wait for transportation in MMORPGs, books and other one-click teleporters popped up all over the place.   I went looking for my level 66 spells for my Shaman during my last foray into EQ, but of course I couldn't find any of them on spell vendors.   So I Googled it, and got a list of zones and NPCs I had never heard of, and went looking for them in game.  After not being able to find any clue where these zones might be, I finally had to Google it - turned out I needed to say some specific phrase to an NPC in some shady corner of PoK to get whisked to this zone.  What!?? 

Or Alternate Advancement.  There are literally hundreds of AA categories to choose from for each class, many of which upgrade arcane attributes or stats, and depend on having other AAs already completed.  Without detailed offline guides about how to allocate these AAs, it would be little more than guesswork to most of us.

Though I'm picking on it a bit here, EQ was (and probably still is) the most amazing, addictive game I've ever played.  But I just can't see it making a comeback in its current state, with years of conflicting design decisions and content all packaged into one big confusing gameworld.  If it's difficult for me to play the game today (and I've played EQ for years, off and on), I can only imagine how overwhelming it all must seem to someone without that history in the game.

Sign me up for a clean rewrite and an EQ3, please... (yeah, I know that's a different thread :)

 If they started updating zone graphics on  a regular basis, I would be back.

I don't mind the random hodgepodge of game design techniques they have tried out, for me it keeps the game interesting and allows for the player to choose different styles of play. I don't think I could have played it as much as I have over the last 10 years if there weren't such variation.

Open a new server and apply the game when it was backed up right before Luclin was introduced. (You know they still have the backups even though they claim they don't)

I played EQ hard core from it's release in 1999 until 2004-2005 in a high end raiding guild. One thing I would be concerned about is the ability or lack of ability to get enough people together to raid those high end game raids. I would think the server populations are low enough now that being able to get enough people in game even in a raiding guild at one time to try the real high end raid content may be a problem now just due to lack of subscribers.

Anyone currently playing know if this is a problem?

Originally posted by jpomatto

I would say if Sony gave it up and a good company took up the game.  Might come back if they dumped Smed and got a professional CEO.

This.

I have tried over and over to come back to EQ.  Hell I lived in Norrath from 99-05 no complaints but ugh never again.

The UI is awful, the engine worse, the accessibility is laughable... if it didn't make me cry.

And requests for EQ classic I really don't understand.  First thing I did last month on yet another go at it was drop in on Qeynos... wow just wow, how was this ever immessive.  Staring at the hard line that is the zone line, the snakes and other under 10 poly models, completely flat terrain... ugh.  Hey but the combat.... huh slow and inactive.

I will be happy to see EQ Next though ;)

Originally posted by Solude

I have tried over and over to come back to EQ.  Hell I lived in Norrath from 99-05 no complaints but ugh never again.

The UI is awful, the engine worse, the accessibility is laughable... if it didn't make me cry.

And requests for EQ classic I really don't understand.  First thing I did last month on yet another go at it was drop in on Qeynos... wow just wow, how was this ever immessive.  Staring at the hard line that is the zone line, the snakes and other under 10 poly models, completely flat terrain... ugh.  Hey but the combat.... huh slow and inactive.

I will be happy to see EQ Next though ;)

Which part of the UI is awful that can't be changed to suit anything you want ? People keep bringing that up, but I don't know what they are on about. 

Originally posted by kidRiot

Originally posted by Heltern

Warrior (Everquest)

I had a level Warrior in Everquest and you know what I remember most? Pressing ‘1′ to initiate auto attack then alternating the pressing ‘2′ to Taunt and ‘3′ to Kick. Exciiiiiiting. Who thought it would be fun to create a class that has access to absolutely zero abilities whilist everyone else runs around shooting lighting bolts or fly kicking mobs in the face. I had a freaking /sit macro - a /sit macro - on my hotkey panel just to use up space. /palmface
 

Druid (Everquest)
You know what absolutely drove me mad? Spending hours getting a full six man group together, holy trinity of classes included, to camp one of the spires surrounding the entrance to Splitpaw in South Karana only to find that a single Druid was already camping the whole damn place. Kiting everything that moves to earn himself a ton of exp and plat. Bastards
 

 

I personally preferred EQ's style on Druids and Warriors.  In terms of Warriors, I did like how they were more "simple" in terms of actual usable skills.  Reason being, is look at MMOs these days.  Every Warrior class has dozens of abilities, which are all flashy and what not.  To me, it really takes away from the immersion of a Warrior class, and turns it into a hotkey button mash spam.  Almost every MMO is a hotkey/special button mashing game.  Its disgusting. 

"SIMPLE" is this case means a Wimpior. I hated the EQ1 Warrior, yeay yea, some nut will say but raid MT...that means you have 6 whole happy Warriors on an entire server, at least till they can't raid.....Druis and every caster were babied. Heck at one point 4 Mages killed Naggy chaining pets, it is B.S. melee was so gimp, fix em or forget em, to late actually!

Originally posted by sebbonx

Originally posted by kidRiot

Originally posted by Heltern

Warrior (Everquest)

I had a level Warrior in Everquest and you know what I remember most? Pressing ‘1′ to initiate auto attack then alternating the pressing ‘2′ to Taunt and ‘3′ to Kick. Exciiiiiiting. Who thought it would be fun to create a class that has access to absolutely zero abilities whilist everyone else runs around shooting lighting bolts or fly kicking mobs in the face. I had a freaking /sit macro - a /sit macro - on my hotkey panel just to use up space. /palmface
 

Druid (Everquest)
You know what absolutely drove me mad? Spending hours getting a full six man group together, holy trinity of classes included, to camp one of the spires surrounding the entrance to Splitpaw in South Karana only to find that a single Druid was already camping the whole damn place. Kiting everything that moves to earn himself a ton of exp and plat. Bastards
 

 

I personally preferred EQ's style on Druids and Warriors.  In terms of Warriors, I did like how they were more "simple" in terms of actual usable skills.  Reason being, is look at MMOs these days.  Every Warrior class has dozens of abilities, which are all flashy and what not.  To me, it really takes away from the immersion of a Warrior class, and turns it into a hotkey button mash spam.  Almost every MMO is a hotkey/special button mashing game.  Its disgusting. 

 

"SIMPLE" is this case means a Wimpior. I hated the EQ1 Warrior, yeay yea, some nut will say but raid MT...that means you have 6 whole happy Warriors on an entire server, at least till they can't raid.....Druis and every caster were babied. Heck at one point 4 Mages killed Naggy chaining pets, it is B.S. melee was so gimp, fix em or forget em, to late actually!

There is some truth to this.  I never wanted to play a warrior for just this reason, they were too boring and lacking in versatility. 

I also remember people calling the game Evercast because it seemed to favor spell casters so much and I certainly remember sharing those sentiments.  The bind rules were one of my biggest pet peeves with classic EQ.  All casters could bind themselves but no melee or hybrids could.  Casters could be bound anywhere in the world but melee and hybrids could only be bound in cities.  What sense did that make?  None if you ask me and there were times when it really pissed me off.  Like the night I ran (yes ran with no ports and took the boat) all the way from Halas to Firiona Vie (however you spell it, that Kunark zone) and then couldn't get a bind because it was late at night and not many people around and my choices were to stop playing or risk dying and respawning in Halas.  Guess what happened.  Yeah, that sucked.

I understood the idea of player interdependance (needing other players for stuff) and I even agree with the principle but it was all so damn one sided in EQ.  Melee and hybrids were dependant on spellcasters for binds, ports, sows, rez, corpse summoning, etc. but spellcasters never had to ask melee / hybrid classes for anything.  They should have tried to give every class some usefull utility ability which others would occassionally need instead of giving half the classes something and the other half nothing and one class which was overloaded with them (druid). 

And then there was the question of solo ability versus group desirablity.  Some classes were definately second rate at soloing but also were not terribly popular in groups.  And then look at the druid again, one of the top solo classes but also very popular in groups if for no other reason than the fact that they could function as the main healer for any normal exp. group.

Yes, EQ definately had it's problems.  The early game in classic still beat the hell out of all the crap nowdays though.

One quick comment to make is that a lot of posted concerns are no longer an issue.  I mean you have people bringing up issues about a class in south karana.  Really?  That's so 1999-2000.

Warriors have a lot more abilities now through disciplines & AA's, but I would guess many people here haven't played EQ recently to know what they are.  Druids are no longer solo kings because many mobs summon, so they serve much better in a group being the second best healer ingame.  For people that haven't played a druid in awhile, there are quite a lot of cool spells that make you a great group class.  There's still work to be done, but druids are second to clerics to healing, have a 90% rez now, still got all sorts of teleports, still can dish out nukes when you don't need to heal, have a fixed duration charm, etc..  There's work to be done to improve the druid class, but the druid class today is a lot better than the solo-class of 1999.

Also other concerns such as corpse retrieval, sow, port, etc.. are really no longer an issue.  You can summon your corpse in guild lobby now.  With Run 5 AA you run sow speed indoor/out without needing a buff.  All classes can get the Origin AA ability that ports you back to your home city, and there are various other items you can get that gives you a port to pok and such.

Anyways, if you miss EQ, I'd suggest giving it another try.  You'll be surprised at how the game has evolved and got rid of many of these tedium that were controversial before.

I don't know if you were responding to me Mardy but I feel I need to clarify.  I wasn't complaining about corpse runs or long travel times or anything.  I was just pointing out the way that the player interdependance was heavily lopsided in favor of casters back in the day.  I'm talking about things you would ask other players for outside of combat.

The only thing I was complaining about was the way binding worked and they changed that even before I left with the soulbinders.  One of the few changes they made which I agreed with although I might have prefered if they had simply given everyone the ability to bind others but not themselves.  Then everyone would have had to ask others for a bind and any class could have done it for others and we all would have been in the same boat instead of half the classes not needing to worry about it while the other half did have to.

Anyway, the stuff you mentioned is part of the reason I have no interest in returning.  It just isn't the same game anymore.

Originally posted by grimfall

The warrior thing got fixed about... 5 years ago?  Maybe six.

Having played a Warrior let me assure you they aren't "fixed" any class that REQUIRES you hire a Mercenary is not "fixed". Brad STILL is unable to design Warriors in Vanguard, so why do you think EQ1 had it right, because you are a Knight and want them screwed up?

Steel Warrior was asked to support the "Classic Server, the answer overwhelming was "HELL NO!" Warriors are a piss poor design in EQ1, EQ2, and Vanguard and need "fixing".

What exactly is the problem with warriors today if I may ask?  They're the best tank ingame bar none, both in group game and in raid game.  If you want to bring up the mercs at least mention the fact that tank mercs are a joke in endgame progression.  They're great for leveling up and catching up from 1-75, but they fade away in tankability & dps department after 75.  It doesn't matter if you have a tier 5 merc either, they don't tank nearly as well as a real player warrior tank.

I don't even know why you brought up Brad because he hasn't worked on EQ1 in a long time, he didn't work on EQ2, and he hasn't been involved with Vanguard since 2 years ago.  The guy isn't a class dev, he was a designer more known for his creativity and ideas, rather than specific class designs which are usually handled by specific game developers.

1. Remove the Escape to Norrath trial.

2. Implement a proper trial, 14 days unrestricted, on the Live servers. Including access to 5150 if one chooses.

3. Offer previous subscribers a free month again, as many of us missed out on the original offer when Mayong launched, or were never offered the promotion at all.

Originally posted by krenalor

Originally posted by grimfall

The warrior thing got fixed about... 5 years ago?  Maybe six.

 

Having played a Warrior let me assure you they aren't "fixed" any class that REQUIRES you hire a Mercenary is not "fixed". Brad STILL is unable to design Warriors in Vanguard, so why do you think EQ1 had it right, because you are a Knight and want them screwed up?

Steel Warrior was asked to support the "Classic Server, the answer overwhelming was "HELL NO!" Warriors are a piss poor design in EQ1, EQ2, and Vanguard and need "fixing".

Warriors were given spells, as well as the ability to rapidly repeat their lvl 51 to 60 class skills.  I don't know the exact date, but it was a little before WoW was released.

Originally posted by Heltern

Classic server PLUS fix the most broken class in all MMO's the Everquest Warrior In fact FIX ALL THE CLASSES MORONS!

 

Warrior (Everquest)

I had a level Warrior in Everquest and you know what I remember most? Pressing ‘1′ to initiate auto attack then alternating the pressing ‘2′ to Taunt and ‘3′ to Kick. Exciiiiiiting. Who thought it would be fun to create a class that has access to absolutely zero abilities whilist everyone else runs around shooting lighting bolts or fly kicking mobs in the face. I had a freaking /sit macro - a /sit macro - on my hotkey panel just to use up space. /palmface
 

Druid (Everquest)
You know what absolutely drove me mad? Spending hours getting a full six man group together, holy trinity of classes included, to camp one of the spires surrounding the entrance to Splitpaw in South Karana only to find that a single Druid was already camping the whole damn place. Kiting everything that moves to earn himself a ton of exp and plat. Bastards
 

personally i have not really been back to eq1 for ages.But i remember exactly what you said above.I started as a warrior and the fact i had zero abilities made it amazingly boring.To compensate they made warriors a almost must(when i played no one wanted sk or pally to tank) .
 

This is why i am more happy with my guardian in eq2.Even though they are not top of tanking list at the moment(rumour has it they will return to glory next xpac) he is tons more fun to play with many abilities .

Originally posted by Euphoryk

1. Remove the Escape to Norrath trial.

2. Implement a proper trial, 14 days unrestricted, on the Live servers. Including access to 5150 if one chooses.

3. Offer previous subscribers a free month again, as many of us missed out on the original offer when Mayong launched, or were never offered the promotion at all.

 

1. Its not that bad... for someone completely new to the game. I think the better question/answer is there any new new players? If not, remove it.

2. Well technically you can buy the game for 5 bucks off steam for all xpacs up to SoD and get 30 days of play time ;)

3. This exsists... just not advertised. Call up SoE Customer support and tell them that you want to try out EQ again, but only want a couple weeks of game time to try out the new enchancements. Everytime i've done this i've gotten up to 2 weeks and at the very least 3 days.

Originally posted by kidRiot

Originally posted by Heltern

Warrior (Everquest)

I had a level Warrior in Everquest and you know what I remember most? Pressing ‘1′ to initiate auto attack then alternating the pressing ‘2′ to Taunt and ‘3′ to Kick. Exciiiiiiting. Who thought it would be fun to create a class that has access to absolutely zero abilities whilist everyone else runs around shooting lighting bolts or fly kicking mobs in the face. I had a freaking /sit macro - a /sit macro - on my hotkey panel just to use up space. /palmface
 

Druid (Everquest)
You know what absolutely drove me mad? Spending hours getting a full six man group together, holy trinity of classes included, to camp one of the spires surrounding the entrance to Splitpaw in South Karana only to find that a single Druid was already camping the whole damn place. Kiting everything that moves to earn himself a ton of exp and plat. Bastards
 

 

I personally preferred EQ's style on Druids and Warriors.  In terms of Warriors, I did like how they were more "simple" in terms of actual usable skills.  Reason being, is look at MMOs these days.  Every Warrior class has dozens of abilities, which are all flashy and what not.  To me, it really takes away from the immersion of a Warrior class, and turns it into a hotkey button mash spam.  Almost every MMO is a hotkey/special button mashing game.  Its disgusting. 

Yeah, I'd MUCH rather sit here and watch my character auto-attack the whole time.

Spammable hotkeys can get annoying real fast.  Having reactive abilities or abilities with longer cooldowns(no not 5 minutes) is more fun.

When it becomes "spam this ability to do the most damage" it's not fun anymore.

I played EverQuest for quite a while....I have to say, it was awesome.  Would I come back?  No.  It wouldn't be the same. Ok I would come back if they made it free, cancelled everyone's accounts and started over with the classic zones.  Then I would know the world would be full of people to group with, I wouldnt be stuck forever behind the 'raiding curve' and I think it would actually be a blast.

The same things that made it suck made it more emotionally involving, and hence more rewarding AND addictive. (EG real consequences for stupid actions - like naked corpse runs across 5 zones)

I played WoW for a couple years, and while they improved on a ton of things over EQ, I still found myself reminiscing about the long journeys to places, the danger of traversing higher level zones, the plethora of classes and races, and the unmatched Lore of EQ.  Things were HARD in EQ, and had the effect of creating great frustration when failed, and great euphoria when accomplished.  You didnt want to die because you lost 10% of your experience that you worked 2 hours to gain!!  You didnt want to venture into high level zones because those mobs would see you from across the zone and NEVER stop chasing you!  Compare that to WoW, where Death is nothing, and running from mobs makes them give up.

But its true a lot of whats been said.  I played a Shadowknight.  There was no cohesiveness in his role.  The game changed your role, and that blew.  I could solo, then I couldn't.  I could tank well...then I couldnt, from one level to another and then from one expansion to another.  They just had no future vision beyond whatever expansion they were working on, and jerked the game too many directions. 

New ogre and troll models modeled after the original models. Better animations on the luclin models.

A free class/aa swap for my druid. Unless of course they are actually in some sort of demand. The only reason I got into the raiding guild I was in with my druid was because my friend was an enchanter.

Leveling speed up. I assume I'll have to solo the 15 or what ever levels to catch up to actually group with people. Making old content soloable is also an option I suppose.

I want a clear clear separation between group and raid content. Raid gear should not be a requirement for group content.

Old content revamped would be nice but not really necessary. I'd rather see old zones remade into new higher level content. With an appropriate shrink in new expansion territory if they come that way.

Classic Server at any point before Luclin.

Make it possible for me to acquire the best gear without ever requiring me to group to do it.

Same with Wow.

No chance, eh?

Thought so.